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Varied Views of Bloody Coves

By Andrew C. Revkin July 30, 2010 12:20 pmJuly 30, 2010 12:20 pm

The periodic roundup and slaughter of dolphins in coves near a Japanese town has become a prime focal point of animal welfare campaigners, particularly after the practice was vividly documented in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.” But another such roundup, of pilot whales, takes place more quietly in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of Denmark.

A fresh batch of video and photos of this year’s Faroese whale killings has been posted on the Web, mainly by animal welfare campaigners. Here’s one example:

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The Faroese ministry of fisheries defends the hunts as a centuries-old tradition and stresses that recent changes in killing techniques have greatly reduced the “time to death” for the marine mammals. Here’s how ministry describes the operations:

The pilot whale hunt in the Faroes is, by its very nature, a dramatic and bloody sight. Entire schools of whales are killed on the shore and in the shallows of bays with knives which are used to sever the major blood supply to the brain. This is the most efficient and humane means of killing these animals under the circumstances, but it naturally results in a lot of blood in the water. It is also understandable that there have been many strong reactions to media reports and pictures of the hunt in other countries, especially in urban communities, where most people have never actually been witness to the slaughtering processes from which their own meat derives. Read the rest…

In Japan, fisheries officials and those making a living from the heavily subsidized whale harvest often make the same point, criticizing Western consumers for decrying blood in the water when they are divorced utterly from the bloody killing floors that produce their plastic-wrapped pork chops and ground beef.

A Twitterer called Radical Omnivore, linking to the video clip yesterday, used very different terms to describe the scene than those employed by Sea Shepherd and other animal welfare groups:

Most of the world’s food is now reduced to a dozen plants & fourteen animal species. Why waste time demonizing people for what they eat?

My initial reaction to such scenes — driven by my awareness of whale and dolphin intelligence — is horror and anger, as is my view of everything from Chinese fur farms to cruel practices in slaughterhouses. As a consumer, I can shun products harvested in ways that violate my sense of right and wrong. Making sure such practices are public knowledge is vital in order to spur concern and discussion. Those decrying such activities should be free to encourage communities conducting such kills to consider the ethical dimensions of their traditions.

But I recognize the views of Faroe Islanders, as well. In the end, why should the outside world have any input into how they hunt and eat when harvesting animals in their home waters?

I see no easy answers here.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.